RUMOR: Aqua to be replaced with Illuminous

Apple Gazette has received a tip from an apple insider that the Mac OS Aqua User Interface will be replaced with a new UI named Illuminous.

The source goes on to say that we will see a demonstration of Illuminous at Macworld 2007.

The gensis for this rumor started earlier this year when Apple posted a position on Monster.com seeking a senior visual interface designer “to conceive, design and develop future enhancements to Aqua, the dynamic user interface for Mac OS X”.

This is the first time a name for the supposed Aqua replacement has been given.

What will Illuminous look like?

That’s anybody’s guess at this point, but we might be seeing some hints of what Illuminous holds in the recent release of iTunes.

We will keep you posted as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Interesting bit from MacShrine. They state that a new build of Leopard was seeded to employees on Friday. What’s interesting, as it relates to this rumor, is the following bit of text:

“Apple continues to gloss over the interface, refining it even more and there is an overly presence of black gloss.”

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Comments

Me too. But the new Unified theme from iCal in the developer builds gives me also the impression of a more white overall look. I wuold think that themes are coming back to school.
BTW: the moment i read the headline, i crap all over me… 🙂

Ok – so they totally stole my name, Illuminous. I mean seriously what the hell kind of name is that? I am still waiting for apple dev connection to finally list my product in their directory, it has taken FOREVER. http://www.zootalor.com

In my opinion, we are seeing the Illuminous since 12th September 2006 in a program that, i think, we all use daily.
Probably, the iTunes UI is the Illuminous. It has a mature UI, more sober look compared to Aqua, more imponent, Apple Style.

It shouldn’t be hard to make the UI have a selectable colour palette. Black, white, grey? Boring. I want COLORS! Application specific, at that!
Goes for the hardware, too. You’d think black and white were the only shades plastic comes in. Retarded.

I’m all for applying the new iTunes UI systemwide. Finally put the kibosh on brushed metal and give the entire system a 100% consistent, truly unified (not to mention very attractive) look. Sure, it could use some tweaking, but overall it’s very pleasing to my old eyes.

You young’uns can have your flashy colours if you want ’em. I’ll take easy-on-the-eyes shades of grey any day of the week.

It may be something like the Dashboard Web Clip button in Leopard’s Safari, seeing as, in the current state of affairs, the button sticks out like a sore thumb. Seeing as people have hinted a black gloss style, this seems like an interesting place to start looking from.

if they redo the interface to match Aperture and other pro apps, it would be amazing. designers prefer to have the interface fade into the background as much as possible so that the work comes to the foreground. Aperture does a great job of that, while the rest of Aqua is so distracting that it actually interferes with my aesthetic judgment.

I would like a Prosumer styled interface across the board for Leopard, but I kind of think it would be quite difficult to market that to any one but Mac lovers. I think the style would put off new Mac users, seeing as Apple stats say 50% of all Mac purchases are from new customers.

I doubt they’d replace everything, in one go – (aside from when they release OS 11)

Perhaps they’re going to create a standard Full Screen Interface and the widgets (not dashboard, but things like buttons) that are required for that are shiny & black like Coverflow’s scrollbar & Front Row’s various things?

Right now the “light” in os X doesn’t come from any particular direction. All the the windows have shadows. When I picture this new interface in my head I see windows illuminated from behind, and light, instead of shadow, bordering the windows. The light would come from behind the windows (although not nearly all of it (the contents of windows have to be evenly lit (and brightly)for readability) and maybe a slight color tint to the light coming from the back of the windows. And I expect a glossy, chromey, dark–not translucent–title-bars and the buttons would be glassy not chromey, and slightly translucent-sitting flush on the window, not floating as in jaguar, or sunken like panther/tiger). When a window is not selected it falls into a subtle shadow, with the window in front of it illuminating it slightly. While aqua put the yum in operating systems, Illuminous will put the sexiness into them. Anyway, that how I imagine it.

It’s not like huge clues about the new UI weren’t left all over the website (before the updated look post DC07).

A black UI is creeping in through iTunes coverflow, FrontRow, TimeMachine and the new “get info” type windows. But expect to see the same desktop when you start your leopard based mac as is shown on the apple website. Customisation options are still going to be available anyway.

Why does the header not show on internet explorer 9 but does show on mozilla firefox and explorer 8. EX9 also drops the headings with H1 tags they do not show. THIS IS a great theme but I cannot use it on my newer sites because of this problem. Is it the theme or its compatability with explorer9.thanks col ferguson.

I do not believe.
Serious problem in the HP screen appears, the Apple has become the world’s best quality laptops. Because China’s Lenovo Thinkpad has been destroyed.
Aqua why classical random changes take place? Both brand awareness and technical content, which are reflected from the customer’s usage of a powerful advantage. I can not think of any reason to replace Aqua.